The invention concerns an apparatus for the printing and/or dispensing of labels having a transport device for a label band which is guided from a supply roller around a deflection edge for detachment of the label from its carrier band to a transport wheel engaged by a driver driven in a stepwise fashion by a hand-operated lever, for example, in accordance with EP 00 39 803.
The labels are usually arranged on the carrier band separated from each other with cuts. In order to print as well as to dispense the labels for labeling an object, it is necessary that the carrier band be transported through a transport step having sufficient extent that, in each case, a label becomes detached at the deflection edge from the carrier band and, for example, comes to rest beneath a pressure roller of the device with which the label can be pressed onto a surface. The length by which the carrier band is transported during a transport step must therefore precisely coincide with the length of the label so that, at the deflection edge, the label is always in the same position (dispensing position). In practical applications however, depending on the size of the print on the label or for other reasons, labels of differing lengths are necessary. The user therefore has access to rolls of label bands with which each label has a particular length but with the length of the labels from one label roll to another label roll possibly being different. In order to avoid the necessity of maintaining a separate labelling device adapted to each particular label length, one had provided the conventional devices with an exchangeable device floor, whereby each device floor is provided with a transport device adapted to the corresponding label length so that, when changing the label size, it is only necessary for the corresponding label roll to be introduced into the apparatus and a device floor is introduced into the apparatus whose transport mechanism is adapted to the label to be processed. Towards this end, it is desirable for different transport devices adapted for the production of different sized transport steps to utilize as many of the same parts of the transport device as possible. The various transport devices having exchangeable device floors which can be utilized in one and the same device, have substantial limitations on the size of the transport wheel. If, for a fixed size of the transport wheel, that is to say with transport wheels of approximately the same perimeter, it is intended to produce differing sized transport steps, it is necessary for differing lengths of the transport step to be correlated to differing rotational angles of the transport wheel--with small labels and correspondingly small transport steps, the transport wheel is rotated by only a small rotational angle and with longer labels it is, however, necessary for the corresponding rotational angle of the transport wheel during a transport step to be correspondingly larger. The transport devices however, in conventional devices, for example, in accordance with EP 00 39 803 are driven by a hand-operated lever whose pivot angle cannot deviate substantially from the size found in practical applications to be optimal so that transport devices associated with transport steps of different lengths must be driven by a motion which is derived from the same hand-lever motion.
In order to solve this problem it is known in the art from EP 00 34 579 to insert a device in the power train between the hand-lever and the transport wheel which transforms the motion derived from the hand lever into a relatively large rotational angle of the transport wheel. This device exhibits a toothed segment driven by the hand lever via an intermediate lever which engages a cogged wheel connected to a coupling member which, in turn, engages the transport wheel. This drive mechanism is extremely difficult and is not easily reconfigured to a differing transport step.
In contrast thereto it is the purpose of the invention to develop as simple a construction as possible with which, for example, the simple transport device of the apparatus according to EP 00 39 803 can be reconfigured for different label lengths; that is to say, with a device with which a driver, which is driven in a stepwise fashion by a hand-lever, engages a transport wheel.